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Congrats to the Belgian Cats for winning their second-straight EuroBasket Women title! Belgium defeated Spain 67-65 in a comeback thriller to secure their back-to-back triumph.
The team was guided by Mike Thibault, the 74-year-old head coach with 379 WNBA wins under his belt. In a somewhat cruel twist of fate, 206 of those wins came with the Connecticut Sun, a team that the previous head coach of the Belgian National Team, Rachid Meziane, left to coach. Thibault was quick to recognize a winning formula and embraced it, not messing with what worked the last time. Belgium continues to rely on limited rotation and it again proved the key to success, with only one basket scored by a bench player through the whole game.
Emma Meesseman is the best women’s basketball player outside of the WNBA, and she proved it again. The tournament MVP averaged 19.8 points, 8.8 boards and five dimes per game in the competition. With Kyara Linskens next to her, she doesn’t have to scrap with opposing bigs and can play her brand of finesse basketball with great freedom. Linskens is no slouch either, as she finished the competition with 14.2 points and eight boards. And with Julie Vanloo (six dimes per game) and Julie Allemand (11.2 points, 4.4 dimes), Belgium found a winning combination that proved successful enough to claim the crown. However, all of these individual achievements almost turned out to be in vain, as Spain, the surprise team of the tournament, led Belgium by 12 points, 65-53, with three minutes left in the final before a furious and fantastic closing push from the Cats.
Although they came up short, Spain could be considered the tournament’s bigger story and biggest winner. The Spaniards were incredible against France in the semi-final, and thanks to one missed free throw, progressed to the final. (They broke France’s spirits so successfully, that the French, one of the competition’s favorites, lost to Italy in the third-place game, in which Cecilia Zandalasini had 20 points, three assists, three steals and two blocks.)
Instead of slowing down due to exhaustion, the Spaniards picked up when they left off and delivered a great showing of team-oriented basketball in the championship game. But, what they lacked was one player who could push the team over the edge, like Awa Fam did against France in the semi-final. Fam, who’s just 19, enjoyed her coming out party against favored France, scoring 21 points and grabbing nine boards. Against Belgium, she scored nine points and four other players scored in double-digits, but none of them more than 11 points.
A true go-to player would have helped Spain when Belgium, down by 11 points as the clock ticked under three minutes, began to play flawless defense that prevented Spain from scoring another basket. With Spain stuck, Belgium went on a 14-0 run and won the game 67-65. An impressive showing by an impressive team.
